Start with the question, not the product. If you want to know who runs a company and when it was registered, a Business Profile answers it for a few dollars. If you want to know whether it can pay you, that is a different, much more expensive document. And a fair amount of what people pay for is available free.
Raffles Corporate Services works with a panel of experienced Singapore law firms who offer cost-effective and efficient legal service and advice. This article is general information only and is not legal advice.
ACRA is the registry of record for every Singapore company, LLP, limited partnership, sole proprietorship and partnership. What it sells is not analysis. It is the filed record, packaged. The value of that record is that it is what the entity itself told the Registrar, on penalty for false statements, on a known date.
This guide maps the products to the questions they actually answer, tells you what is free, and covers the two things people get wrong: paying for information they could have had for nothing, and accepting a document someone else supplied without verifying it.
What ACRA sells, and what each product is for
Six products cover almost every commercial need. All are bought through Bizfile and delivered digitally.
| Product | The question it answers | Indicative cost |
|---|---|---|
| Business Profile | Who is behind this entity, what is its UEN, when was it registered, is it live? | $5.50 |
| Corporate Compliance and Financial Profile (CCFP) | Is this company financially healthy and compliant? Profile plus financial profile, ratios, audit opinion and directors’ opinions. | $50 |
| People Profile | What else is this individual involved in? | $33 |
| Extracts | What exactly did they file? Copies of past filings such as annual returns or accounts. | From $11 |
| Certificates | Can I prove this entity’s status or details to a third party? | From $11 |
| Registers | Who are the members, directors, CEOs, secretaries or auditors, officially? | From $11 |
Each product is dealt with in more depth in our guide to the types of ACRA information product and what each costs, and the buying flow for the commonest of them in buying a Business Profile via Bizfile.
Variable capital companies sit outside this catalogue. VCC information is bought through the separate VCC shop rather than through the ordinary Bizfile product pages.
Choosing between them
Business Profile is the workhorse: onboarding a customer, satisfying a bank, checking that the person signing a contract actually holds a position, confirming an entity is still live. For most commercial due diligence it is enough.
CCFP is what you buy when you are extending credit or considering an acquisition, and the question is solvency rather than identity. It costs roughly nine times a Business Profile, which is disproportionate for a small one-off transaction and obviously worth it for a six-figure exposure.
People Profile is for when the entity looks fine but the person does not. It tracks an individual across registered businesses, which is how you spot the director who has appeared and disappeared from a string of entities.
Extracts give you the underlying filed documents rather than a summary. Use them where you need the primary source, for example in a dispute.
Certificates are what an external party wants: a bank overseas, a tender board, a foreign registry. The distinguishing feature is the certification, not the information.
Registers are the official lists of a company’s key people. Officers and members can get most of their own company’s registers free, as covered below.
What you can get without paying anything
This is the part worth reading twice.
Bizfile’s free search functions. Without logging in at all, you can check basic information about a business, including its status and registered address, check whether an entity is a registered corporate service provider, and browse live entities by business activity. For “is this company real and still alive”, that is frequently sufficient.
Free Business Profiles of your own entity. A business gets a free Business Profile after registration, after renewing a registration, and after filing an annual return or annual declaration. If you have just filed, do not buy what you have already been given.
Free company registers. Active position holders and members of a company can download most of that company’s registers at no charge through Bizfile, with no cap and no expiry.
Free constitutions and extracts for your own entity. Available to the entity itself through Bizfile.
trustBar. ACRA’s free verification service, trustBar, lets you check the authenticity of a Business Profile or a certificate confirming registration or incorporation, and preview the document, without buying anything.
The practical rule: pay for information about other people’s entities, and check twice before paying for information about your own. For what Bizfile does and does not cover generally, see our guide to what Bizfile actually is.
Residential addresses are not on the menu
Residential addresses in ACRA’s records are restricted. They can be released only to categories of requester specified in the ACRA Act 2004 and its Sixth Schedule, principally authorised information service providers and certain specified persons, and the request is a separate paid application rather than a product you add to a basket.
If you are trying to locate a director for service of process or debt recovery and you are not in one of those categories, an ordinary information product will not give you a home address. Take advice on the proper route rather than assuming the registry will supply it. The ACRA Act 2004 on SSO sets out the framework.
ACRA also does not display registered addresses for entities that have ceased operations, because those addresses were often residential and can no longer be updated.
Buying, downloading and verifying: how the flow works
Four steps, in order.
- Decide which product answers your question. See the table above. Buying a CCFP to confirm a UEN is money wasted, and buying a Business Profile to assess credit risk is a false economy in the opposite direction.
- Buy it in Bizfile. You can purchase without logging in, or log in with Singpass or Corppass. Logging in means the download code also lands in your Bizfile inbox rather than only in an email. Authorised information service providers offer additional commercial services layered on ACRA data, which is a separate decision.
- Download it within 30 days. Since October 2023, purchased products are released through a download code and a delivery email address rather than a direct link, which exists to defeat phishing. The code arrives by email within about 15 minutes, and is also in your Bizfile inbox if you were logged in. Enter the code and the delivery email on Bizfile’s product download page. After 30 days the window closes and there are no extensions.
- Verify anything you did not buy yourself. If a counterparty hands you a Business Profile, verify it rather than reading it. Business Profiles and incorporation or registration certificates can be verified free through trustBar. Other products are verified through Bizfile’s product authentication page. Our guide to verifying and certifying ACRA documents sets out which route applies to which product.
Certification, and using documents overseas
Since December 2024 ACRA certifies applicable information products, such as extracts and registers, electronically. Manual certification is no longer offered. Where a foreign embassy or commission needs the document legalised for use abroad, ACRA’s certified products are recognised by the Singapore Academy of Law, which provides legalisation for a fee.
What goes wrong in practice
The 30-day download window expires. Somebody buys a bundle of profiles for a due diligence exercise, the deal goes quiet, and three months later the codes are dead. There are no extensions. Download on the day you buy, and file the PDF somewhere durable.
The document was never verified. A counterparty emails a “Business Profile” that shows an impressive paid-up capital and a respectable director. It is a PDF, and PDFs are editable. Verification through trustBar takes under a minute and is free. Anyone relying on a profile supplied by the subject of the profile, without verifying it, has done no due diligence at all.
Buying what you already own. Company officers and members can download their own registers free, and an entity gets a free Business Profile after filing its annual return or declaration. We routinely see clients buy both. Check your Bizfile entitlements first.
Treating the filed record as current fact. ACRA shows what was lodged, as at the moment of lodgement. A director who resigned three weeks ago and whose cessation was never filed still appears. A profile is evidence of the register, not a guarantee of the world.
Reading a profile as a credit assessment. A Business Profile says nothing about whether a company can pay you. That is the CCFP’s job, and even a CCFP is a starting point rather than a verdict. Nominee arrangements in particular can make a share register unrepresentative of who actually controls an entity, as our note on nominee shareholder arrangements explains, and the controller position is dealt with in our guide to the register of registrable controllers.
Using a personal login to buy for the company. Where a purchase should sit with the entity, buy it through Corppass so the record and the download code live in the company’s Bizfile inbox. Our note on who should have Bizfile access covers assigning those roles safely.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a Business Profile cost in Singapore?
A Business Profile is one of the cheapest ACRA information products and is bought through Bizfile. It gives basic entity information: UEN, entity name, registration date and details of position holders, owners or partners. Entities also receive a free Business Profile after registering, renewing a registration, or filing an annual return or annual declaration, so check before buying your own.
What is the difference between a Business Profile and a CCFP?
A Business Profile answers identity questions: who, what and when. A Corporate Compliance and Financial Profile adds a financial profile, financial ratios, audit opinion and directors’ opinions, so it answers solvency and compliance questions. The CCFP costs substantially more and is appropriate where you are extending credit or taking on real exposure.
Can I find a director’s home address through ACRA?
Generally no. Residential addresses held in ACRA’s records are restricted under the ACRA Act 2004 and its Sixth Schedule to specified categories of requester, chiefly authorised information service providers and certain specified persons, through a separate paid request. Ordinary information products will not disclose a residential address to a member of the public.
How do I check that an ACRA document someone sent me is genuine?
Verify it rather than read it. Business Profiles and certificates confirming registration or incorporation can be checked free through ACRA’s trustBar service, which also previews the document. Other products, including CCFPs, People Profiles, extracts and registers, are verified through Bizfile’s product authentication page. Take the minute. PDFs are trivially editable.
I bought a product but never received it. What now?
After successful payment, a payment confirmation and a delivery notification containing your product download code are sent to the email address you specified, usually within 15 minutes. If you purchased while logged in, the code is also in your Bizfile inbox. Check the spam folder and the inbox before contacting ACRA, and download within 30 days because no extensions are given.
Do I need to log in to Bizfile to search for a company?
No. Bizfile’s free search functions work without logging in and will tell you a business’s basic details, its status, its registered address and whether it is a registered corporate service provider. You only need to log in to buy products, to access free entitlements as an officer or member, or to file.
Buying the right document the first time
Most of the money wasted on registry searches is spent on the wrong product, or on a product the buyer was already entitled to free. The fix is not clever: decide what question you are answering before you open the shop.
Raffles Corporate Services runs registry searches and counterparty checks for Singapore businesses every week, and we know which document a bank, a tender board or a foreign registry will actually accept.
You can reach us through Raffles Corporate Services, or read more on Singapore corporate secretarial practice at Singapore Secretary Services.
— The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services
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